- 2 Port PCI Express eSATA Dual Profile C
- 2 Port PCI Express eSATA Dual Profile Card
Product Description
StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express eSATA Controller Adapter Card - StarTechcom 2 PCI EXPRESS DUAL PORT CARD PROFILE PEXESATA2 eSATA Controller Components... See more product details
Customer Reviews: StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express eSATA Controller Adapter Card
Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a nice, cheap way to add a couple of eSATA ports to a PC. It comes with a low profile bracket which can quickly be fitted in place of the regular one so it's good for PCs in compact cases. My PC recognised it as a 3 Gbit/s SATA II device and performance is correspondingly very good. You have to be a little wary of the way Startech and others describe some products: they say "eSATA-300" but this does not mean SATA III or SATA 3.0 which would offer 6 Gbit/s speed; it refers (colloquially and confusingly) to the theoretical 3.0 Gbits/s speed of SATA II. Don't you love devious marketing people? No, me neither. Anyway, as there don't seem to be any 6 Gb/s enclosures even available this probably won't affect many people.
The card comes with a driver disk and a simple manual. Physical installation is as simple as can be. I didn't use it in OS X or Windows so I can't comment on those drivers. The Linux kernel contains a driver for the controller (Silicon Image 3132) while port multiplier is enabled by default so it works automatically with any current or recent Linux based OS. The card works as a port multiplier so you can use it with enclosures which use a single eSATA cable to connect multiple disks to your PC. I'm finding this really useful as the single eSATA port built into my PC's board doesn't have this feature and until now I'd had to use USB 2.0 to connect an enclosure containing two 1TB disks and the slow speed was frustrating. Now I connect using eSATA and the transfer speeds have increased hugely.
This card is ideal unless you have an enclosure which supports the latest 6 Gbit/s SATA III (and as far as I can tell there aren't any).
Amazon Verified Purchase
A while back I had an Acer Aspire EasyStore H340 Windows Home Server that was running out of space and also took a long time to backup using conventional USB 2.0 ports. Since that server has a built in eSata port on the back, I though... great lets buy a dual disk eSata enclosure and that will fix the problem! Right? Wrong!
The eSata port (controller) on the back of the server does not support port multiplier. The server would not see any disks even if they were configured internally in the enclosure as a big single RAID 0 virtual drive.
The solution was this card. It solved all problems and still gave me an extra port if I in the future want to add yet another enclosure to the server to increase the now 10TB of available store to possibly 14 TB. Just thinking now that the 1st hard disk I ever had, had a wooping 5 MB of storage...
I have now the 2 disk enclosure of which 1 is adding to the disk pool in the home server and the other is used for (very fast) backups (well much faster than USB 2.0 in any case).
Very happy with the card so far. If you find yourself in a similar situation you can't go wrong with this card.
Hel
I was looking for a cheap ESATA PCI-E x1 card that would allow me to run two Sharkoon drive docks as hotswap drive bays. I use multiple bare drives as backup drives. I just find that it's cheaper for me to buy bare drives as and when I need them and then just slot them in the docks. The Asrock motherboard came with one ESATA port but it isn't hotswap. So with this card I now I have two hotswap ESATA ports and this is important as it means I can attach a hard drive to the system without having to reboot it. So, what do you get? You get the card, a driver CDROM and a low profile bracket. The card itself is very small and therefore can fit into the smallest of systems. For my system it sits right next to a wacking great graphics card with a very large heatsink. No issues what so ever. So if you are looking for a small low profile ESATA card with both brackets included then you won't be disappointed. Performance wise the hard drives connected to it perform at the same speed as the rest of the SATA II ports on the motherboard.
Amazon Verified Purchase
the card worked first time ,
with the Hornettek Enterprise
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006ZLTI56/ref=oh_details_o06_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
i removed a USB 3.0 card and replaced it with this one
perfect*
the card has a built in Port Multiplier which enumerated all the drives.
there are two esata external ports so i should be able to upgrade or
add another device
very happy
Amazon Verified Purchase
The StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express eSATA Controller Adapter Card works as advertised. Good and fast. And also rather easy to install in my PC
Amazon Verified Purchase
I bought this for my HP Proliant MicroServer running Windows 2008 R2 because I needed an eSata port with port multiplication (the eSata on the Microserver is the basic type that can only reference one physical disk). The good reviews I read from other buyers convinced me this was the card to get and I wasn't wrong.
The card comes with all the necessary drivers (although the instructions also give the website to download the latest version from) and both a full height and half height backing plate. Once plugged in and the drivers installed I plugged in my drive enclosure and was able to see all of the drives installed in it.
Fantastic!
Amazon Verified Purchase
Very pleased with this item. It solved my problem of the peculiar implementation of the built-in eSata port on my Dell XPS. Using it with the Startech 4 bay eSata dock plus my original 1 bay dock I can now run 5 docked Sata drives at the same time if I'm minded to.
Amazon Verified Purchase
First, the delivery: received today via FedEx, which was unexpected. Box was pretty tatty and certainly didn't qualify for "as new", but the device itself appears to be in perfect condition, and all expected accessories and documentation were included. Given I got this for less than a tenner all-in, I'm more than satisfied.
Now, the product: the chief highlight is that this item works with OS X 10.8.2 "Mountain Lion" (not to mention earlier versions too). For full details, see the review here by Mr. A. P. Smith, with follow-up comments. In brief: I was able to confirm that data integrity was maintained and that speeds are definitely improved over USB 2.0, but that booting isn't supported.
Even briefer: two thumbs up.
Amazon Verified Purchase
Originally bought this to pair up with an IcyBox eSATA Dock using Windows 7. Worked fine. I wasn't hung up about transfer speeds, I just wanted to be able to plug in disks, back stuff up to them, and them store them somewhere safe.
Recently decided I needed a NAS solution for my home network and re-purposed an old PC (approx 8 years old) using NAS4Free. Decided to chuck this card in to the box and it worked a treat. No need to load drivers, NAS4Free detected it fine.
Some people have complained it's unreliable using a 32-bit version of NAS4Free, but most are reporting it's stable with the 64-bit version (which I am using).
Have given it 5* for the ease of use. Worked hassle free with both Windows 7 and NAS4Free.
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